Australian politics evening summary

The corporate regulator has been accused of missing or ignoring persistent signs of wrongdoing, in a damning parliamentary committee report that also calls for a royal commission into the Commonwealth Bank's handling of misconduct by financial planners. The Senate's economic references committee described the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (Asic) as a "timid, hesitant regulator" that was too ready to uncritically accept assurances of a large institution that there were no grounds for intervention.

The prime minister met with Clive Palmer in their first meeting for two years. Palmer has agreed to vote to scrap the carbon tax but will support the renewable energy target, the Climate Change Authority and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

The carbon tax repeal bills and the mining tax repeal bills have passed the house.

The new senate will return on July 7 and is expected to pass the two bills.

The carbon tax repeal bills have now officially passed the lower house for the third time, though without the Clean Energy Finance Corporation repeal. Labor attempted to amend them to bypass the fixed carbon price and go straight to the emissions trading scheme (as Labor intended). But they lost on the numbers, as you would expect.

It would appear that Tony Abbott did not vote on the carbon repeal and he has not been recorded in either the carbon tax repeal or the mining tax repeal in the house minutes.

The government plans to take the bills straight to the senate for the next sitting week - starting July 7 to be passed with the help of the three Palmer United Party senators, Jacqui Lambie, Dio Wang and Glenn Lazarus.

Office of National Assessments whistleblower turned independent Andrew Wilkie has done a blog on Iraq. He resigned from ONA over Australia's original involvement in Iraq in 2003 and he has waded into the issues again, sounding a warning.

No long-term good would come from a renewed Australian combat involvement in Iraq. Yes, we might help prop up the government a while. But for what? To delay the final reckoning and the opportunity for Iraq to find its natural political condition? The fact is the situation in Iraq is simply horrendous and the bloodletting between now and peace will be nightmarish, regardless of whether it’s now or in five years’ time.

Regrettably all the wisdom in the world is now next to useless. Australia should not have helped start this war in the first place but, having started it, we’re now left to witness the disaster run its course.

The Iraq War was avoidable and is unforgivable. May those who have been killed at least rest in peace.

The search for missing flight MH370 has moved further south in the Indian ocean with searchers forced to spend three months mapping previously unchartered waters before a proper investigation can take place.

Deputy prime minister Warren Truss announced on Thursday the search for the plane off Western Australia had moved further south and was still about 1800km offshore.

An expert satellite working group defined a new search zone of up to 60,000 square kilometres in the southern Indian Ocean in the hunt for the plane which has so far been fruitless. The new search area has not been mapped and Chinese and Australian ships are already mapping the seafloor which is expected to take three months.

The search of the area will be able to start properly in August and could last for 12 months.

Liberal senator David Bushby has released a dissenting report said the royal commission into ASIC was not warranted, given the issues have already been extensively reviewed.

However his government colleague National Party senator John Williams - who has been chasing this issue for years - did not join Bushby.

Williams has spoken again about the need to licence financial planners individually, rather than one licence per company as happens now.

Williams has urged the government to regulate planners, with their full history available on the internet. Under his model, ASIC could be given the power to suspend a planners licence on the basis of a phone call, though with a right of appeal to stop vexatious claims.

He told the senate at the moment, anyone could apply to be a planner with an eight day course and advise people how to spend millions of dollars.

There is a crossover with the government's Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) reforms, which the finance minister will have another crack at implementing.

We understand there is a pretty good chance of individual licence plan getting up, given it would answer some of the criticism levelled against the FOFA reforms, which remove some of Labor's tighter regulations on advisors.

"It's a very good report and the people of Australia can be assured that ASIC could do their job better," Williams said.

A senate committee into the Australian Securities and Investment Commission has called for a royal commission after examining "serious misconduct" engaged in between 2006 and 2010 by financial advisers at Commonwealth Financial Planning Limited (CFPL), part of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia Group (CBA).

Given the seriousness of the misconduct involved the committee believes that a Royal Commission should be established to examine this matter. This is not a recommendation that the committee has made lightly, but the evidence the committee has received is so shocking and the credibility of both ASIC and the CBA is so compromised that a Royal Commission really is warranted.

Committee Chair Labor Senator Mark Bishop said past practices of some advisors at CFPL was "unethical, dishonest, well below professional standards and a grievous breach of their duties".

The way in which vulnerable trusting people were targeted shows that the CFPL planners involved had a callous disregard for their clients' interests. That a major financial institution could have tolerated for so long conduct that included apparent criminal activity is not easy to accept" said Senator Mark Bishop.

Mike Mrdak has been reappointed as secretary to the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development for three years.

Jane Halton has been appointed secretary of the Department of Finance for five years as David Tune retires. Halton has been the secretary of the Department of Health since 2002.

Secretary of the Department of Health has not been announced.

Martin Parkinson will be leaving his position as Secretary of the Department of the Treasury in mid-December 2014. I will announce arrangements for the position of the Secretary of the Department of the Treasury at a later date.

A government question to social services minister Kevin Andrews: I refer the minister to the audit report into the management of the Building Better Regional Cities program by the previous Government. How is the minister ensuring value for money in this program?

Andrews says the audit report was "a savage indictment" of the incompetence and the "partisan pork barrelling" of the previous Government, alleging it was used to "prop up" Craig Thomson and independent Tony Windsor.

This is a program that had as its target some 8,000 new affordable homes and yet it's expected to deliver no more than 3,200. Indeed, by mid 2016, it will be even less than that, 2,969 homes out of 8,000 expected to be delivered under this program.

His defence is he did not have skiing relations with that man. We've got the member for Wills (Kelvin Thomson). He was actually a referee for Tony Mokbel. Madam Speaker, I've got plenty of other examples.

Labor's Kate Ellis to assistant education minister Sussan Ley: Before the election the Government promised to help families with cost-of-living pressures. The Minister's own department has confirmed that if the Government get their way, half a million low and middle-income Australian families will have hundreds of millions of dollars in their childcare benefit cut from 1 July this year. No matter what deal the Government cobbles together in the next few days, isn't it true that Australians will be worse off because of this Government's cuts?

Ley:

There is a pause in the threshold for three years. Why are we doing that? Why are we forced to do that? As I said, it does give us no pleasure but we are forced to do that because of the unsustainable Budget position.

Government question to foreign minister Julie Bishop: Will the Minister advise the House on action the Government is taking to deal with the threat posed by extremists returning from fighting in Syria and Iraq?

We are strengthening our partnership with Muslim leaders in Australia and in our region to help articulate the devastating impact of the conflict on the people of the Middle East and to reinforce that it is illegal for any Australian to support terrorist activities. The government will shortly introduce new legislation giving our security agencies greater powers to counter the terrorist threat.

Labor to PM: Before the election the Prime Minister said there would be no cuts to health but the Prime Minister is cutting $39 million from public dental programs that Australians including pensioners rely on. Why should Australians suffer from the Prime Minister's broken promises?

There have been no cuts to health spending. Health spending goes up every year. Sure, there are some individual programs that have been adjusted but our commitment not to cut health spending has been absolutely and utterly delivered upon, says Abbott.

Will the Minister update the House on the Government's border protection measures including the measures he has put in place to protect Australian jobs?

Morrison says in the first nine months of their government there has been a one-third increase in the level of field inspections to find illegal workers, a 20% increase in the location of the illegal workers under our enforcement measures, a 190% increase when it comes to warnings.

In Operation Lever from Ulladulla and Nowra to Bega and Merimbula, there were 12 workers identified in cafes and other places as parts of those programs. In Project Tricord, north of Perth, 122 illegal workers were identified in a partnership operation with WA police.

Labor to PM: If the Government gets its way, nearly 300,000 elderly Australians will today receive their last ever seniors supplement payment because of the Prime Minister's unfair Budget cuts. Why is the pensioner cutting pensions and senior payments while pay ing billions of dollars to big polluters to pollute?

Pensions go up every six months, every year. Now, it's true that along with other periodic payments, unaffordable, unsustainable periodic payments that were put in place by the former government, the seniors supplement will not be continued.

It's not a pork barrell, says Turnbull, because it goes to electorates on both sides of the house.

This fibre to the node roll-out, this thousand-node roll-out with Telstra will grow and develop into the full large-scale roll-out across the network and includes the electorates of Shortland, Charlton, Dobell, Newcastle, Hinkler, Robertson, Wide Bay, Dixon and of course Longman, so Honourable Members can see that this is - this covers electorates from both sides of the House and it is focused both on engineering practicality and above all on need.

Government to Malcolm Turnbull: Will the Minister update the House on what the Government is doing to accelerate the roll-out of the NBN and what does this mean for people living in my electorate of Longman?

NBN Co has finalised a commercial negotiation with Telstra for a considerably expanded program to plan, design and construct fibre to the node high-speed broadband which will connect about 200,000 homes and businesses. This is an adrenalin shot for the NBN and will show the way to accelerating the roll-out that had completely stalled under Labor.

Tony Burke to PM: The Prime Minister told us how he was looking forward to working with the member for Fairfax but before the election the Prime Minister said, and I quote, "There will not be deals done with the Independents and minor parties under any political movement I lead." Prime Minister, how's that one working out for you?

Liberal Kelly O'Dwyer to Christopher Pyne: How will the Government's higher education reforms spread the opportunity for Australians to gain a higher education qualification? And how does this compare with other approaches?

Labor's approach was to cut without reform, Madam Speaker. Our approach is to reform higher education because it is a $15bn export industry for this country. The difference between the Coalition and the Labor Party is one of trust. We trust students, we trust students to make intelligent choices when present would the opportunity to do so. We also trust universities to know what is in their best interests and to respond to those best interests.

Plibersek to Abbott: No matter what chaotic deal the Prime Minister pieces together this week, isn't it true that Australian families will be $6,000 a year worse off because of the Prime Minister's broken promises on the GP tax, petrol tax and cost of living?

Mal Brough to Warren Truss: Deputy prime minister, could you outline how the Budget will assist in building the *roads of the 21st century*? And how does investing in quality infrastructure create more jobs and grow the economy?

One of the important things that's a part of this Budget is clearly getting rid of the carbon tax. When you haven't got a carbon tax the cost of road-building goes down and you're able to achieve, therefore, much more by way of infrastructure expenditure than might otherwise be possible and of course the Labor Party is all over the place when it comes to carbon tax.

Labor to PM: My question is to the prime minister. Yesterday we learned that the Prime Minister told the Australian Medical Association that he was willing to look at alternative models for his unfair GP tax. If the Prime Minister is preparing to cave on the GP tax, why won't he just cave in on his entire Budget of broken promises?

Abbott reaffirms the government is determined to ensure that there is a modest copayment for GP services and goes into past Labor support for a copayment.

(This question about the difference of interpretation between the government and the AMA over their meeting on the copayment.)

Adam Bandt to PM: As things now stand there, will be no Direct Action, no carbon price and no Emissions Trading Scheme. As most of the new Senators now support at least the principle of an ETS, will you now agree to around ETS as well or will you continue to fail to protect the Australian people and leave the country without an economy-wide plan to tackle climate change?

Abbott:

There is no country in the world, according to the Productivity Commission, that has an economy-wide carbon tax or indeed an economy-wide Emissions Trading Scheme. For instance, the European ETS covers just 45% of total emissions at about $8 a ton. California's ETS covers about 35% of total emissions at about $12 a ton. New Zealand's ETS covers 50% of total emissions at about $4.60 per ton and the Chinese ETS or the proposed pilot in Beijing covers 40 % of total emissions and I'm advised that 99.9% of permits have been provided to industry for free so when it comes to carbon taxes and Emissions Trading Schemes, the world is going against the Greens' view.

Shorten to Abbott: My question is to the prime minister. New modelling shows that the cost of science degrees will triple up to $123,000 because of the government's broken promise on university fees. Why does this prime minister have such contempt for science and Australia's future scientists?

The universities of our country are determined to do the right thing by their students and by their potential students and they're also determined to do the right thing by learning. They are the custodians of our best traditions. They are the custodians of our higher learning and the last thing that they want to do is to price degrees out of the reach of the Australian people.

Hunt says when the carbon tax is repealed, "price reductions will flow through to residential and small business customers".

A very interesting thing happened just an hour and a half ago. In the Senate the Labor Party voted to try to put back the repeal date for the carbon legislation. Well, there will be a new Senate soon and when that happens they will consider it.

Liberal Fiona Scott asks Greg Hunt: I refer the Minister to this statement from AGL confirming that if the carbon tax is repealed price reductions will flow through to residential and small business customers. What is standing in the way of repealing a carbon tax that doesn't help the environment, that will ease the cost-of-living pressures on businesses and families in my electorate of Lindsay?

Hunt welcomes the question because Labor has not once asked about the feral pig eradication program. Or something like that.

Labor to the PM: Today's the national day of protest for the CSIRO against the Prime Minister's cuts and broken promises. The Prime Minister is cutting 1 in 10 jobs at CSIRO and slashing $111 million from its Budget, including cuts to climate research. Why does the Prime Minister believe science is absolute crap?

Disregard the last statement, says Speaker Bishop.

Abbott says the statement is untrue.

The former government certainly cut the CSIRO in its time, says Abbott. Job cuts occurring now are a result of Labor.

The best thing that members opposite could do with this Budget is to say, 'It's the tough medicine we just had to have.'

Government question to Abbott on the carbon tax: Abbott says Shorten is the only thing standing in the way of 'lower power prices'.

For the first time Abbott addresses Clive Palmer's statement:

I do welcome the statement of the member for Fairfax that he and his senators will support the government's legislation to repeal the carbon tax and the member for Fairfax is absolutely right, abolishing the carbon tax will make our industries more competitive and it will make our people's lives more manageable. I do look forward to working with the member for Fairfax and cross bench senators to ensure that all the savings from the abolition of the carbon tax are passed on to consumers.

Shorten to Abbott: This Prime Minister promised Australia an adult Government of no surprises and no excuses. So why has the Prime Minister delivered one of the most deceptive, unfair and chaotic Budgets in Australian history?

This Government is determined to fix Labor's debt and deficit disaster and that's exactly what this Budget does, Abbott says.

Lunch time Australian politics

Here is your lunchtime lot:

Tony Abbott and Clive Palmer have met for the first time as more details emerged about Palmer's plans for an enforcement mechanism that ensures the savings from the carbon tax are passed on to consumers.

Al Gore has urged Australians to maintain the struggle for action on climate change, one day after he lent his political clout to Palmer for the carbon tax repeal.

The mining tax repeal bill is being debated in parliament, before it goes to the senate where it is sure to garner Palmer United Party support. Labor said the repeal, which stops two superannuation intiatives, would hurt low income earners.

Liberal backbencher and scientist Dennis Jensen has attacked Al Gore, alleging he could benefit financially from his political support for the Palmer position.

The second reading debate on the repeal of the mining tax (minerals resource rent tax) has begun in the house of reps.

BTW, the MRRT raises no money in this financial year but raises $450 million next year (2014-15).

Labor treasury spokesman Chris Bowen is talking about the importance of the MRRT, more particularly the linkage to retirement incomes.

The tax was linked to two initiatives under Labor:

1. It increases the superannuation contribution from 9 to 12%.

2. It instituted the low income superannuation contribution. This payment was a government superannuation contribution of up to $500 per year on behalf of low income earners generally paid directly to the individual's super fund.

The treasurer tells us we need to have the longest working life in the world before we become what he calls the 'leaners'. What is he doing for retirement income?

Bowen says the repeal delays the increase in the super contribution from 9-12% and abolishes the low income contribution, which was meant to reflect a small proportion of the super tax concessions received by high income earners, particularly through self-managed super.

How can this government live with itself saying to low income earners we are giving you no tax concessions but give big tax concessions to high income earners?

There is some technical stuff going down in the Senate about when various committees report back on various bits of legislation. The important bit to know is that the government is trying to get the environment committee to report back ASAP on the carbon tax repeal. The government have submitted a date of July 7, while Labor wants an extra week to string it out.

The extraordinary Gore-Palmer drama began about 10 weeks ago when the quietly spoken but very effective former Australian Conservation Foundation head, Don Henry, approached a former adviser to Tony Windsor, John Clements, to ask whether he could open a line of communication with Clive Palmer.

Henry is an international board member of Gore’s “climate reality project”. Clements and Windsor had struck up a friendly relationship with Palmer during the last parliament. Palmer’s three senators held the key to the future of most of Australia’s existing climate change legislation. It was an unusual, but potentially powerful, mix.

Clements was sceptical – was the conservationist just lining up to have a go at Palmer? He was persuaded the dialogue would be serious.

Phone calls began, between Henry and Palmer and between Palmer and Gore. Would the Palmer United party (PUP) keep the clean energy finance corporation, the climate change authority, even the emissions trading scheme in a kind of hibernating state in preparation for tougher international action?

Speaking of science, CSIRO staff are meeting this lunchtime to hold protests in all capital cities over the government's $115m budget cuts, not to mention taking the scalpel to the Cooperative Research Centres (CRC), the Australian Climate Change Science program and industry department initiatives such as Industry Innovation Precincts.

Back to Dennis Jensen, a tricky character to box. Those who took note of the budget may recall that Jensen led the charge against the Coalition's science cuts. He has a doctorate in physics - the only science doctorate in the parliament - and argued passionately for the social contribution of science and the need for a science minister.

But he is a sceptic when it comes to climate change. He has said that he believes carbon dioxide is contributing to global temperatures, but not as much as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is suggesting and does not think governments should be taking urgent action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

So the #PalmGore announcement was too much to take for Jensen.

He said Al Gore as vice president of the US voted against ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, "clearly because that was to his political advantage".

Jensen noted Gore did not live the lifestyle he advocated, jetting around the world, living in mansions, consuming 20 times as much energy as the average American and selling a television station to oil-rich Qatar.

For those who watch Star Trek, there is no one he reminds me of more than the Ferengi species, where profit is the first, last and only important factor.

Liberal Tangney MP Dennis Jensen in the Federation Chamber of the House of Representatives. Photograph: Mike Bowers

On the Labor side, Mark Butler,Kelvin Thomson and Andrew Giles have had a go. On the government benches, deputy prime minister Warren Truss and the member for Lindsay Fiona Scott.

Scott noted that while campaigning during the last election, the weather at her local train station was spot on average. That is a chilly six degrees in the morning rising to 22 through the day for a normal September in Penrith.

She said it was heartbreaking to see pensioners "wrapped in blankets" restricting themselves to one room in the house, because Julia Gillard had welched on her promise not to introduce a carbon tax.

The man who is in charge of Australian agriculture, Barnaby Joyce has called carbon pricing "a dopey tax".

He is thanking the Labor party for instituting the carbon tax and getting annihilated at the last election and thanked the Australian people for "realising how stupid the policy was".

Every time they turned on the electric blanket, the carbon tax was in bed with them.

There is a lot of gnashing of teeth this morning between the two sides of Clive Palmer apropos his climate solution. He is either climate superman or climate devil, depending on your point of view.

Paula Matthewson of The Hoopla has come down firmly on side of pointy tail Clive, describing his announcement as:

a headline-grabbing act of arse-covering.

Here is a taste of it:

Palmer could have simply promised to bring the start date of the existing ETS forward.

But no, that wouldn’t quite suit Palmer and his vast emissions-producing mineral and coal extraction empire. Palmer wants to establish an ETS that stays at zero (that is, puts no price on carbon) until Australia’s major trading partners like the US, China and Korea come to the party.

Holding off climate action until “our trading partners do the same” has long been one of Australia’s classic delaying tactics, and criticised roundly by environment groups as shirking our global leadership responsibilities. Any consensus amongst trading partners to take climate action has notoriously eluded climate advocates since the 1997 Kyoto meeting, and is likely still to be several if not many years away.

Canny Clive knows this, but is betting that the shiny façade of his new ETS will sufficiently distract voters from the fact that it is completely empty inside.

Given Labor has had a few positions of climate change, Butler reminds everyone that Labor went to the last election promising to get rid of the fixed carbon price and move straight to the emissions trading scheme.

So he has no trouble with the repeal of the fixed price but does have a problem with the repeal of a meaningful ETS.

Direct action has no discipline on carbon pollution. It is a dressed up slush fund.

He said the government's campaign on climate change rests on 10 "whopping falsehoods".

These are:

1. Jury is still out on climate change.

2. Although there was warming earlier in the century, it has stopped and the world has actually slightly cooled.

3. There is no link between climate change and extreme weather events like bushfires.

4. World leaders need not trouble themselves with climate change and should focus on the big issues like economics.

5. That other countries are not committing to emissions trading schemes or other actions to address climate change.

As Mark Butler debates the carbon repeal bills in the lower house, remember that it was not so long ago that Clive Palmer had a fierce debate with economist Ross Garnaut about climate change. Garnaut argued for action, Palmer said it was misplaced.

Mr Palmer said scientists should be focusing on the "97 per cent" of carbon dioxide emissions that come from nature.

"It's not logical. If we say 97 per cent comes from nature and we don't even bother examining how we can reduce carbon in nature, just in industry, it's not a proper balance," he said.

"I mean, if we say we want to reduce it by 1 per cent, which I think is the target globally, to do that, why can't we take some from nature, some from industry, or maybe all from nature?"

At last welcome signs of a positive approach to climate change, given the reality that the carbon tax was rejected by the people....

The Palmer proposals go some way towards a workable compromise between the government’s mandate to end the carbon tax and the need to replace it with something better than the Coalition’s expensive and deeply flawed Direct Action plan.

The Palmer plan is a game-changer that recognises, as the Herald has argued, the world is moving quickly towards combined action on global warming.

Clive Palmer’s stunning wedging of not just Tony Abbott but Labor and the Greens means climate change remains on the table as an issue for the next election. But not in the way the Prime Minister envisaged.

The lethal message for Tony Abbott is that an emissions trading scheme can be resuscitated – without the agony of renegotiating an entire carbon scheme – when anyone but Abbott is Prime Minister.

Why Al Gore bothered to fly around the world to support Clive Palmer’s confirmation yesterday that he would vote to abolish Australia’s carbon tax is a mystery. For all the theatrics, the biggest change in Mr Palmer’s position — acknowledging that Australia should move to an ETS when the rest of the world also does so — is a longstanding position of this newspaper. An ETS is the most efficient way to abate carbon, unlike Labor’s clunky Renewable Energy Target. Mr Palmer’s determination to rule out any changes to the RET by contrast, which forces households to subsidise costly wind farms though their power bills, was disappointing.

On his way to have a bit of vegemite toast with the prime minister, Clive Palmer gave a short doorstop outside his digs at the Hyatt.

This from Bridie Jabour:

As Clive Palmer prepares for what he says is his first meeting with Tony Abbott in two years he stopped to talk to reporters on the way into parliament. It seems he is being very careful not to link the repeal of the carbon tax with his proposed Emissions Trading Scheme.

Palmer conceded he would be “disappointed” if an ETS does not get up but when asked directly if that would mean a block of the repeal of the carbon tax he said:

“I think the carbon tax is bad because it’s five times the price on world carbon...it’s got to go but I think it can only go on the basis Australians get their electricity costs reduced because they’re doing it tough at the moment and they’ll be doing it tougher if we adopt some of the budget measures.”

Palmer said former US vice-president Al Gore was the one who approached him, not the other way around and he found him “very powerful and very convincing”. As for what he was going to say to the prime minister this morning?

“I just want to hear that we can each listen rather than say what is the best thing, the important thing about politics really should be listening to other people, to be able to change your mind and not have a closed mind.”

Palmer says Abbott recognises there is a climate problem and it is evidenced by his direct action plan but “the air moves around the world” hence it is a global problem that needs a global solution - ie Australia should have an ETS if other countries agree.

“Our number one trading partners are Japan, US, China and Korea, so we’re saying if you want to act we’ll act with you, that doesn’t seem so extraordinary to me,” he said.

It appears to mean the carbon tax will be indeed be “axed”, but only if the government agrees to keep a kind of “frozen” emissions trading scheme to be re-activated some time in the future and also - and most importantly - if it agrees to give some kind of as-yet-unspecified assurances about lower household power bills.

Odds are Tony Abbott will be able to meet those conditions, although they remain so vague it’s kind of hard to be sure.

She also makes the point that we keep the architecture of the $10bn Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the renewable energy target and the independent Climate Change Authority. These are the harder bits